With December now upon us, bear a thought for just how busy Santa Claus will be on the night of Christmas Eve, and in the early hours of Christmas Day.
Every year he faces a logistics puzzle - how to deliver all the presents to all the children around the world who celebrate Christmas.
A study from a few years ago puts some figures on just how frantic his night is. Researchers at the University of Leicester calculated that there are some 715 million Christian boys and girls across the globe.
They then assumed an average of three children per household, which means that Father Christmas has to deliver to 238 million homes. This, in turn, requires Rudolf and the other reindeer to pull Santa's sleigh at half the speed of light. That's 336 billion mph (540 billion km/ph).
While Father Christmas is no doubt continuing his final preparations and limbering up, Christmas is, of course, also the busiest time of the year for retailers - none of us can sadly rely solely upon presents that are magically delivered via our chimneys.
And with online orders now accounting for more than a third of all Christmas season sales, retailers have to focus intently on their delivery systems.
The behemoth in the industry is Amazon, which throughout last year delivered 4.2 billion parcels in the US alone.
That was more than double its 1.9 billion total in 2019, as coronavirus fuelled a vast surge in online orders. So much so, that last year Amazon delivered one in five parcels in the US.
It is a similar picture in the UK, where Amazon's sales also doubled in 2020.
Such is the convenience of Amazon that many of us now automatically expect things like next-day delivery, and being able to track orders.
For other retailers, large and small, this poses a problem - how can they make their delivery systems as efficient and user friendly as possible?
One option is to become a third-party seller on Amazon, but that comes with a number of fees that reportedly can equate to 45% of the price of some items.
Alternatively, retailers can stay independent of Amazon, and instead use the services of a number of tech firms who can help them best get their products to customers.
One such business is UK firm Diamond Logistics, run by founder Kate Lester.
Via its Despatch Lab digital platform it allows retailers to book, track and manage deliveries using the company's own fleet of vans, but also via the Royal Mail, and delivery firms such as DPD and Hermes. Retailers can also arrange to store their products at Diamond Logistics' warehouses, from where they are then directly sent out.